Pink Noise: Queer Identity and musical performance in a Local Context

Abstract

It is widely accepted that music means something different to each of us. Musical compositions and performances are the product of particular times, places and people that manifest themselves in multiple styles and genres, each with characteristics that extend far beyond music’s sonic properties. Moreover, as DeNora suggests, “music may serve as a resource for utopian imaginations, for alternative worlds and institutions, and it may be used strategically to presage new worlds” (2000:159). Within musical worlds one is often free to perform a variety of roles: we can independently or simultaneously compose, perform and listen; we can play multiple instruments; perform and appreciate various styles. As musicians and music lovers, we are permitted a fluidity that allows us to create music, to interpret it, and to reinterpret it: in other words, we are permitted a multiplicity of musicalities. The same fluidity and freedom of expression however, is not readily available to the sexed human being. As a man or woman our sexual and gender roles are largely fixed. The logic of heteronormativity normalises and privileges heterosexual expressions of sexuality and places same sex desires in negative binary opposition to this (Corber and Valocchi, 2003).